EMERGENCY ACTION AUTHORIZED. ORGANIZATION OF LOCAL PROTESTS IS NEEDED. CONVERGE AT FREEWAYS AND HIGHWAYS. LIBRARIES, MALLS, GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, SCHOOLS…ALL ARE ACCEPTABLE AREAS! STARTING TODAY! INFO ON BILLL: www.washingtonpost.com en.wikipedia.org The names and contact details of the Founders of this bill can be found here: pastebin.com pastebin.com pastebin.com pastebin.com pastebin.com Post this on all forms of social media, including link to video: i49.servimg.com www.youtube.com

THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE CALL TO ACTION! There are two new immediate threats to internet freedom: Obama’s Cyber-Security Executive Order and the TPPA. We must mobilize resistance immediately. Transcript: Greetings Citizens of the United States and the World. Emergency Action Required. We have been valiant thus far in protecting our internet. We stopped both SOPA and CISPA. Then they pushed for the international treaty, ACTA, and the entire world pushed back. But we’re not finished yet. There are two more threats that we must unite together again to defeat. The first is a CISPA like executive order that the White House is considering. In order to pass these bills that Congress has rejected, the Obama administration has taken to the use of Executive Orders so that they may bypass Congress entirely. This is incredibly concerning as the process is very complex for Congress to overturn laws passed this way. The Supreme Court may also declare it unconstitutional, but such incidents are very rare. With enough opposition, we can stop this before it even gets off the ground. The second, and more immediate threat, is another international treaty. Like ACTA, this treaty has been negotiated in secret. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is so secret that not even the Congressional Committee in charge of such treaties can even see the bill. It is however, viewable by six hundred corporate representatives. All we know is what has been leaked thus far, and it reaches well beyond the scope of …

Mirrored and Voice from www.whatistheitu.org ———————————————————————- What is the ITU?: en.wikipedia.org Was ist die ITU? (german): de.wikipedia.org ITU Homepage: www.itu.int on Twitter they are @ITU ———————————————————————- Articles EU: tech.slashdot.org (english) EU: netzpolitik.org (german) ———————————————————————- We are anonymous We are legion We do not forget We do not forgive Expect us

China, one of the world’s largest Internet markets, could be out of reach of Facebook because of the Chinese government’s strict censorship policies, the company said in its filing for an initial public offering (IPO).

The company however continues to “evaluate entering China”.

Analysts do not expect conditions to get favourable soon for Facebook in China. The market, which already has popular homespun social networking sites, is also moving to Twitter-like microblogs.

“China is a large potential market for Facebook, but users are generally restricted from accessing Facebook from China,” the filing said. “We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government.”

Speculation on Facebook entering the Chinese market mounted in late 2010 when the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited several major IT firms in the country. But to enter the country’s market Facebook would have to abide by China’s censorship laws, which force sites to delete content critical of the government. Besides Facebook, some other Internet sites like YouTube and Twitter are currently blocked in the country.

The Chinese government was always nervous about Facebook, said Bill Bishop, an independent analyst who watches the Chinese Internet market. Facebook’s role last year as a forum for protestors to organise against governments in the Middle East and North Africa only cemented those concerns, he said.

“If Facebook wants to come to China, it would be great, but it’s extremely unlikely to happen in the near or medium-term,” Bishop added.

Facebook will also have to compete in a market already occupied by strong domestic players, said Mark Natkin, managing director for Marbridge Consulting. Some of these competitors include sites such as Renren, which features a user interface similar to Facebook, and had 137 million users as of September 30.

But many of China’s Internet users are moving away from Renren and other Facebook-like social networking sites and instead flocking to Twitter-like microblogs operated by local Chinese companies. Chinese users of these Twitter-like microblogs have reached 250 million users, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

“From a competitive standpoint, the market has already moved on,” he added.

In spite of being blocked in the country, Facebook still has some users in China. Beijing resident Shi Beichen, a Facebook user since 2006, said he visits the site by connecting through a virtual private network (VPN), which allows him to view sites blocked by Chinese authorities.

One reason he uses Facebook is because the site is free of censorship. He also likes the site because it allows him to synchronise his different Internet applications such as Tumblr and Instapaper on to one platform through Facebook, he said.

“I think Facebook will enter China. Zuckerberg wants to come. But it will be extremely difficult,” Shi said, noting China’s censorship laws and the popularity of social networking sites already operating in the country. “Foreign Internet companies still don’t quite understand the Chinese Internet market or its users’ habits. Even if the companies don’t involve themselves with sensitive topics, it will still be hard for them to succeed.”

Stratfor Global Intelligence CEO George Friedman on Wednesday blasted those responsible for a December attack on the global intelligence firm’s website that compromised credit card information and emails belonging to thousands of subscribers.

In a YouTube video linked to the company’s freshly relaunched site, Friedman accepted responsibility for Stratfor’s failure to properly protect customer data while accusing the attackers of imposing a new censorship regime on the internet.

“We are now in a world in which anonymous judges, jurors and executioners can silence whom they want,” Friedman said in the video. “This is a new censorship that doesn’t come openly from governments but from people hiding behind masks.”

Stratfor provides intelligence on global business, security and economic issues. The company has a worldwide client base, including many from within the government and military.

The company’s website was breached on December 24 by unknown hackers who later posted the names and credit card numbers of 75,000 people who had subscribed to or paid for Stratfor’s research. The hackers also posted hundreds of thousands of names and email addresses of those who had registered on Stratfor’s website.

The site was taken offline after the attack and relaunched yesterday. However, visitors to the new site were greeted with a page informing them of a service interruption – apparently due to a high volume of interest in the site.

Hackers who said they belonged to the Anonymous hacking collective claimed responsibility for the December attack . They claimed that the real target of the attack was not credit card data but the millions of emails stored on Statfor’s servers.

Others, who also claimed to be speaking on behalf of Anonymous, distanced themselves from the attack and said it was not the work of Anonymous.

According to Friedman, Stratfor first learned about the attack in early December after the FBI warned the company about credit card information and customer data being stolen.

Friedman said he was prepared for the hackers to publicly disclose the breach and for the ensuing criticism that was sure to follow. “We knew our reputation would be damaged, all the more so because we had not encrypted the credit card files,” he said. “This was a failure on our part. As the CEO of Stratfor, I take responsibility.”

On December 24, the attackers again broke into Stratfor’s site and posted a note on its home page announcing the credit card and email thefts. The hackers also disclosed that they had destroyed four Stratfor servers, along with all data and backups on it, Friedman said.

“We were shocked at the destruction of our servers. This was not your typical hack attack. The intent here was clearly to silence us by destroying our records, our archives and our websites,” he said.

He said that portrayals of his firm as the “hub of a global conspiracy” are offbase. He said the hackers would find little of any value from the emails beyond the fact that the company has sources within various governments and corporations. “We are what we said we are – a publishing organisation focused on geo-politics.”

He criticised the hackers for taking advantage of the internet’s anonymity to attack companies and lamented the lack of accountability on the net. “The attempt to silence us has failed,” a defiant Friedman said. “Our website is back, our email is working and we are restoring our archives,” he said. “We will continue to publish our analysis.”

The Hackerspace Global Grid is hoping to build its own satellite network in an effort to counter various Internet censorship initiatives such as the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) act.

In addition to launching communications satellites into space, the group plans to develop a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.

“The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let’s take the internet out of the control of terrestrial entities. [We] can put humanity back in space in a meaningful way,” hacktivist Nick Farr told the BBC on the sidelines of the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

“The goal is to get back to where we were in the 1970s. Hackers find it offensive that we’ve had the technology since before many of us were born and we haven’t gone back. We believe communication is a human right.”

Hackerspace Global Grid participant Armin Bauer expressed similar sentiments, but acknowledged that hobbyists have thus far only managed to put a few small satellites in orbit due to budgetary constraints.

“Professionals can track satellites from ground stations, but usually they don’t have to because, if you pay a large sum [to send the satellite up on a rocket], they put it in an exact place.”

However, Bauer plans to create a network of low-cost ground stations that can be purchased (at 100 euros each) or built by individuals that could be in place during the first half of 2012. Operating together in a global network, the stations would be capable of pinpoint satellites, helping them to send data back to Earth.

“It’s kind of a reverse GPS. GPS uses satellites to calculate where we are, and this tells us where the satellites are. We would use GPS co-ordinates but also improve on them by using fixed sites in precisely-known locations,” he added.

Aside from budgetary constraints and technical difficulties, the Hackerspace Global Grid also faces potential legal threats from various countries opposed to the anti-censorship plan.

“There is an interesting legal dimension in that outer space is not governed by the countries over which it floats,” explained Prof Alan Woodward from the computing department at the University of Surrey.

“So, theoretically it could be a place for illegal communication to thrive. However, the corollary is that any country could take the law into their own hands and disable the satellites.”

It is Christmas time. Between buying gifts and baking cookies, I assume that you are all spending at least some minutes thinking about the coming year. So do I. When I think about a coming year, I think about another chapter in the book of life. That new chapter exists for me as for the technology that surrounds us. This train of thought always leads me to the issues I would like to address for taking care of in 2012. One of these issues is – and has always been since my blog exists – censorship. A recent news article on RIM and Indonesia dictates that I devote this censorship-article to censorship on mobile phones.

When talking about censorship and mobile phone there is always one incident which pop up in the minds of Germans who are keen on staying updated on this area. A very popular German newspaper (similar level of entertainment and information as the British SUN) brought out an application for mobile phones. The newspaper always features a half-naked woman on its first page. Let us leave it at the following: iPhones do not show these pictures in the BILD app. If that was imposed censorship or induced self-censorship is hard to tell. Needless to say that these pictures are still shown in the web presence of this website.

The news article which brings me to this blog is about Indonesia and RIM, the company which produces the Blackberry mobile phones. Blackberry mobile phones have the unique feature that when the data is transferred (e.g. while browsing or checking Facebook) it is encrypted. The reason for that is the infrastructure of Blackberry. The data is transferred to the data center in Canada and from their redirected. Blackberry having been the number one provider for companies uses this as an unique selling point towards customers who do not like to let their business secrets float around in cyberspace unsecured. There are three ways for a government to crackdown on Blackberry data streams.
1. They ask for the data streams from their mobile phone service providers and try to decrypt the 1′s and 0′s coming out (kind of pretty much work and difficult if not impossible to manage if you aim at ALL data streams in your country
2. They sue RIM in their country to open the encryption for them and threaten them to otherwise ban Blackberry phones (has not worked so far for any country which tried such as Saudi Arabia or India)
3. Get RIM to install a service center in your country and them get the decrypted data directly from there (by e.g. getting a court order)

You can deduce that the third option is the most feasible. Therefore, Indonesia – the Southeast Asian country with the most Blackberry users – was happy having been chosen to host the new RIM Southeast Asia data center. This data center is going to be setup between now and early 2012. However it is not setup in Indonesia but most probably in Singapore. The reason for that can be found partially in 2009. In 2009 the Indonesian government asked Blackberry to remove its encryption or at least tell them who of the Blackberry users in Indonesia is using his or her mobile phone (gender mainstreaming!) to watch porn. Watching porn is prohibited by law in Indonesia. Sorry guys. Indonesia was also not able to convince RIM to open up and show them who of their citizens is watching porn. Therefore, Indonesia wanted to have the data center within the limits of its legal reach and RIM did not want that to happen. Precisely because other SEA countries which would then channel their data streams through the newly built data center would be affected. In simple words: Indonesian executive crackdown on a RIM data center within its borders would not only enable them to read the traffic of their citizens but also of citizens from all other countries which are going to channel their data through that center. No one wants that.

The fun part here is: Give a man or woman a computer, a search engine and subsequently a virtual privacy network or secret proxy and he or she will still be able to watch porn. Even though a discussion on watching porn as a Human Right under Freedom of Information is floating around in my head, I will not entertain it now. All that drama because someone could do the same with less effort on his phone? Well, I guess watching porn on your phone is not much fun. Therefore, it would take tethering to bring it to a bigger screen. I am not sure if looking for a VPN/proxy or tethering is more easy to accomplish. I guess, what I am trying to say is: It is useless to try the whole crackdown on a possible RIM data center thingy.

Censorship does not get you anywhere, because you are only going to hide the problem. If you, dear government, really want to do something about it, fight the source, the roots and so on. Censorship however, is doomed to fail. Conclusively, in order to make your citizens not watch porn…you have to come up with something better. Maybe tell them that it makes them lose eyesight forever…